


on a wing and a prayer

by treepyful (treeperson)



Category: Leverage
Genre: American Magical realism, F/M, Folklore, Found Family, Kinda, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Team as Family, Wingfic, non-typical wingfic?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 00:50:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12947730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treeperson/pseuds/treepyful
Summary: "You've seriously never heard of Ravens?"Written for the 2017 Leverage Big/Mini Bang.





	on a wing and a prayer

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [on a wing and a prayer [ART]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12949698) by [bloodinamug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodinamug/pseuds/bloodinamug). 



> Officially a Mini Bang, but with Big Bang length because I am consistently unable to predict the word count on my finished products. Hurrah!
> 
> The artist half of this Bang has been bloodinamug and they put an incredible amount of effort into making a gorgeous cross stitch (how cool is that?!) that can be found over [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12949698). Make sure you go check out how amazing it is and let them know in the comments!

It wasn’t often that Alec felt stupid. Call it ego, call it acknowledgment of a basic truth, call it confidence, but he knew he was damn smart -- a genius, let’s be real -- and while it wasn’t something he tended to flaunt (well, not _too_ much, because sometimes you’ve just gotta make sure your team fully comprehends the beauty and difficulty of your digital exploits), it was something that sat firmly in the _fact_ box of his brain: Alec Hardison was an extremely intelligent man.

As a result, being confronted with something so outside his realm of knowledge, so completely beyond his ken, that he wasn’t sure how to even _process it_ let alone understand it, was not a common occurrence. However, it was a Tuesday morning in early April when he found himself floundering in a state of utter bafflement after he woke up to find a single black feather nestled in the sheets beside him.

A scratching tickle on his arm had roused him from his sleep, first countered with a lazy swat and then a grumble as he rolled over to confront the culprit. Eliot grunted at his movement, nuzzling further into his pillow and flexing his fingers over Alec’s chest as it moved. Alec dug around in the sheets, slowly waking up as he hunted for whatever the pokey bit was. If Parker had left another chopstick under her pillow “for food dreams”, there were going to be _words_ exchanged.

A small patch of stiff silky softness caught his attention, so different from their cuddly flannel sheets not yet switched out to accommodate the increasing spring temperatures, and he traced his fingers over its shape in confusion. A gentle tug released the smooth, sharp end from where it was caught in the weave and Alec held it up in front of his bleary eyes, pinched carefully between finger and thumb. 

Yup. It was a feather.

As much as Alec refused to ever ( _ever_ ) admit he played up his allergies to get out of some of the less pleasant tasks assigned to him in the course of their work, he actually was allergic to a lot of things. Dust, dogs, celery, grass, latex (ugh), nickel, and _feathers._ So despite his partners’ mutual love of down duvets, their California king was dressed in layers of cotton and synthetic fluff with not a feather to be seen.

Except right now. 

Alec’s gaze shifted between the feather and the white scratches on his bicep (note to self: _moisturize_ ), his brow wrinkling in confusion. “The hell?” he murmured, tilting the feather side to side and brushing his fingers over the soft tip. He rolled over onto his back, propping his head up on the pillows behind him, and Eliot lifted his face out of his own pillow long enough to shush him.

Alec shushed him back and lifted his arm to give Eliot room to make like a koala against his side, which Eliot promptly did, digging his forehead into Alec’s breastbone. Brushing the stiff ridges of the feather against the fingers of the other hand, Alec puzzled it over. It wasn’t a particularly large feather, maybe three inches or so from end to end, and it curved gently on two axes into a slight twist that caught the morning light. A deep glossy black, it was shiny in a way that would have resulted in blue highlights if Disney controlled reality, and it ended in a smooth arc that tickled the sensitive pads of Alec’s fingertips. It was a perfectly normal feather. _Weird._

“Any idea why there’s a feather in the bed, sleepyhead?” Alec asked quietly, tapping the soft end of the feather against Eliot’s nose.

“Where’s Parker?” Eliot responded muzzily, yawning through most of it. Alec glanced through the en suite’s doorway (open, not recently used) and paused to listen for any noises emanating from the rest of the apartment.

“Morning parkour, I think,” he answered. “I can triangulate her phone if you’re worried.”

Eliot just grunted. “She in late last night?”

“Yeah,” Alec breathed over Eliot’s hair, remembering waking briefly when Parker’s slim form slipped in beside him sometime in the wee hours.

“‘Splains it, then.”

“Explains what?”

“Sh’ sheds when she’s not sleepin’ well.”

“...Sheds?”

Eliot opened one eye to peer at Alec in confusion. “Yeah. Sheds feathers.”

“Parker sheds feathers when she doesn’t sleep well?” Alec said, tuning his voice into something condescendingly sweet. Dopey morning Eliot was _adorable_.

“Man, seriously?” Eliot responded, turning his head upright so his chin dug into Alec’s chest and giving him a look. Whoops, not so dopey anymore.

“Uh? Yes? No? I’m not sure what the right answer is here, you gonna have to help me out a little, man.”

Eliot groaned. Alec twirled a strand of Eliot’s hair around the feather’s shaft.

“You really don’t know? I thought you knew.”

“I ain’t got half a clue why you think Parker sheds feathers, no I do not.”

“Shit, man.” Eliot blew out an annoyed breath. “She’s a Raven.”

“...A raven?”

“No, a Raven. Capital R.”

“How did you hear--”

“It’s a very distinctive s--”

“No, stop.” Alec put up his hand, covering Eliot’s smirking mouth. “It is too early and there are too many confusing things happening for me to deal with your ‘I’m a scary badass with weird senses’ schtick right now, ‘kay? Just no.” Eliot rolled his eyes and licked Alec’s palm, who pulled his hand back with an outraged sound that was _not_ a squeal, tyvm. 

“ _Anyway_ ,” Alec said pointedly, scrubbing his hand dry on the sheets beside him. “What do you mean, ‘she’s a Raven’? Is that like a cult or something? Or like the Girl Scouts but without the cookies? Sports team? With feathers as accessories? Ooh, that could be racist. Is it racist?”

Eliot stared at him and Alec’s brain tried to distract him from confusing morning discussions by focussing on how pretty Eliot’s eyes were when they were framed in his long hair and looking so intense and angry, damn--wait, no--

“What?” Alec exclaimed, putting his hands up to fend off the glare, the feather still pinched between two fingers. “What did I say?”

“You’ve seriously never heard of Ravens?”

“Uh, I sure have not, no, not _capital R_ Ravens. Feel like enlightening me, oh wise one?”

“Hell, you make me feel like such an old hick sometimes.” Eliot blew a strand of hair out of his face and tucked a hand under his chin, his palm flat against Alec’s ribs. “It’s an old legend, I guess. Real old, pre-Columbus or whatever, and real rural. Oral stories, probably not online too much, which explains why you don’t know shit.” Alec scoffed and Eliot just jabbed him with a finger. “When I was young, if you ever worked with the woodsmen or went to the mines or camps or, shit, just talked to the older folk around town, you heard stories about the People.”

“Capital P?”

“See? You can hear it.”

Alec ignored that in favour of raising his eyebrows. “Capital P People? C’mon, you fooling me right now? Because that is unfair. No pseudo sci-fi pranks until after ten in the morning, new official rule, I’m gonna write it on the fridge.”

“Do you want to hear what I have to say or not?” Eliot snapped.

Alec gestured broadly with the feather.

“The People,” Eliot continued pointedly, his voice a growl, and Alec wriggled slightly under his weight, “are shifters. They shift between animal and human. Ravens are People that are both ravens and humans.”

“Wait, what are y--”

“My granddaddy used to say that you couldn’t write about them. If you tried, the ink would run off the page. That might be bull, but I never tried. Explains why it’s just tales, though,” he added, matter-of-fact.

“See, now you’re just talking crazy, sounds like some Tolkien myth or whatev--”

“Parker’s a bird, Hardison. Literally.” Eliot tapped Alec’s chest with a single finger. “An actual, literal bird.” He squinted, then continued. “Kinda.”

Alec stared. Eliot stared back, eyebrows raised. Then Alec felt his brain stall, imagined a little spark coming from a faulty connection somewhere in his temporal lobe. “Uh.”

“Yeah. Well, she’s --” Eliot sighed and went a little stiff in the shoulders before continuing. “The People are beings. They’re people, but not like you’n me. Not human, but not animals. Fuck, I dunno, I can’t believe you’ve never heard of this and _I_ have to explain it to you.” 

Alec felt his jaw kick back into gear and close his gaping mouth. “Wait, a bird? Parker’s a bird?”

“A Raven, yeah.”

“Man, you’ve gotta be playing me.”

“I ain’t fucking playing you, Hardison. It’s not my fault you don’t know shit.” Alec put a hand on Eliot’s tense shoulder, rubbing with his thumb. “Seriously, she’s a Raven. Go do a Google on it or something, I’m obviously shit at explaining. Maybe there’s something good hiding out online about it that can lay it out better than me. But it’s a thing, a real thing, and I’m not fucking playing you.” 

“Okay, okay, sorry.” Alec dug his thumb into Eliot’s lat and he shivered, closing his eyes. “Can I ask her about it? Or is that some kinda taboo?”

“I dunno,” Eliot yawned out. “I never did but that’s me. You probably can. Just don’t be a dick about it.”

“I’m never a dick,” Alec responded, indignant despite actively trying to calm Eliot’s metaphorical hackles (needing to clarify metaphorical versus literal animal parts on his partners will be a _fun new game_ ). “Why would I be a dick?”

“Yeah, okay bud.” 

“Hey, okay, wow, gimme a little time here,” Alec protested, dusting the feather pointedly over Eliot’s furrowed brow. “I just found out that my girlfriend is apparently a gotdamn mystical bird person and my boyfriend knew but didn’t tell me, okay? That is not a normal thing to learn, especially not at this hour. That’s whack, man.”

Eliot huffed and let his shoulders down, Alec’s rubbing morphing into slow, languid pets. “Whatever. It can’t have been that disturbing,” Eliot raised his brows, a small smirk on his lips, and nodded vaguely in the direction of Alec’s lower half. “Given that tent you’re pitching.”

Alec felt his cheeks heat. “You were getting all growly and glarey, with your eyes and bed head, and I am not that strong a man, Eliot.”

“You have the survival instincts of a lemming,” Eliot grumbled as he rolled away from Alec and planted his feet on the floor, scrubbing his hands over his face. Alec reached a hand out to rest on Eliot’s bare hip.

“A sexy lemming?” 

That just got him a snort and Alec’s hopes of a languid morning fuck died a quick death. 

“In case you forgot,” Eliot said amidst a yawn, “I’ve gotta go do recon at Nexxor before the CEO gets in this morning and this doctor alias is both an on-time kinda guy and a ‘not smelling like sex’ kinda guy.” Eliot stretched his arms above his head, arching his back, then patted Alec’s hand and stood up. Turning, he raised a brow at Alec, who hurriedly flicked his eyes up. “And don’t be weird around Parker when she comes back. You’ll freak her out and we’re in the middle of a job.” 

Alec watched as Eliot and his strong back and his firm little ass made his way across the bedroom to the en suite, the door closing solidly behind him, before he dropped his head to the pillow with a groan. 

“This is _not_ a good morning, y’all,” he told the feather, which, predictably, didn’t respond. “Not at all.”

 

* * *

 

_orangesodagummyfrogs has logged in_

r/UrbanLegends

> Shapeshifter folklore? Submitted 3 months ago by xepladl
> 
> 29 comments share report  
>  I moved to the US from India when I was a child and one of the things that I really remember noticing was the frequency of urban legends/fairytales/etc. that reminded me of tales from my childhood in India. Specifically there were LOTS of stories about animals that turn into people and vice versa that we have in India too. Snakes, bears, birds (esp crows and ravens, ie the smart ones), and rats were the ones that I found most common which could easily be attributed to the fact that they’re all animals of either danger, intellifence or large populations so humans pay attention to them more, but i’m also wondering if there’s another reason for the similarities between two VERY different cultures? Anyone have any resources or thoughts on the existence of real shapeshifters? I’m just thinking it might be like the “pan religion” thing theory, where all the major world religions share base roots because they’re all actually from the same thing --- maybe the shapeshifter stories all come from real populations of shapeshifters that existed back whent he continents touched more? Idk, hmu with ideas

> [-] minorcrafter 46 points 3 months ago  
>  Really? I’ve lived in the US for my whole life and I don’t remember anyone talking about shapeshifters, just the sort of urban legends like “hobo joe’ll getcha if you’re not home before the lights turn on”. Which are fine and dandy, that’s what this subreddit is full of, but it’s not some real ancient intercultural stuff, y’know?
> 
> [-] xepladl 128 points 3 months ago  
>  Weird I dunno man. Maybe it’s a regional thing? We landed in a pretty rural area and that’s putting it kindly, it’s mountain man country.
> 
> [-] minorcrafter 46 points 3 months ago  
>  Ah. Yeah, that’d do it. The rest of the world moved on from “real” ghost stories, but there are _some_ parts of the US that aren’t exactly the forefront of modern thought.
> 
> [-] pupureleafly 683 points 3 months ago  
>  “Modern thought”, my ass. Rural America, especially in Appalachia and the Heartland and the Ozarks, is rife with oral culture and deep traditions borne of old knowledge, but heaven forbid they don’t immediately embrace every new wave of technology that NYC and LA and SF jack off to. Naw, just write them off as a bunch of stupid rednecks, right? It’s easier than changing your own hideously prejudiced thought patterns.
> 
> [-] ybelma 520 points 3 months ago  
>  Found the mountain man! You’d think trappers would be better at spotting obvious bait.

> [-] danaus 213 points 3 months ago  
>  Hell yeah, mountain man country! I’m West Virginian, born and raised, and going back like a bazillion generations. Gotta love the tales. I can name a few but my comment keeps failing to post if I actually write them out which is deffo creepypasta and giving me the heebies. If this version, with the stories/names redacted, actually posts then I’m going to bed with the nightlight on tonight.
> 
> [-] danaus 213 points 3 months ago  
>  Aw fuck. Nightlight it is.
> 
> [-] xepladl 128 points 3 months ago  
>  Dude thats so weird. Ghosts in the machine or whatever yeah?
> 
> [-] danaus 213 points 3 months ago  
>  Animal spirits in the fecking machine, more like. All the more credence to your idea, tho.

 

* * *

 

Eliot knew he wasn’t very good at communicating the subtle things in life. Words were a tool and he preferred his tools blunt, heavy, and efficient. His thoughts came in images and movements, seemingly disjointed but coherent when seen from a distance, and converting them to words was a skill he’d struggled with for his entire life. His high school essays had always come back to him with the same comments written all over in red, underlining his short sentences and overly structured paragraphs and repetitive use of words that conveyed _exactly what he wanted to say_ so why would he use another word just to make it sound better? Moving was easier, more expressive, and Eliot sometimes wondered if there was an alternate universe somewhere where he went into dance instead of falling in and out of sports and the military and private forces, using his body and his fists and a distinct lack of words to make himself heard.

Leverage Inc. hadn’t fixed any of that, not really; what can change the fundamentals of how a person’s brain works? But they -- all of them -- loved him despite his gruff way of communicating. Maybe they loved him because of it. They understood his need to hug, even if he pulled away immediately after. They understood what he meant when he cooked them food, using his hands to add value to basic ingredients, and what that value meant. They understood how he took the pain meant for them, redirecting and absorbing and striking back at those who dared even try. They didn’t try to make him express himself in other, more conventional ways.

Parker took a long time for him to understand, but they got to a place of mutual communication far more quickly than he had with Hardison. Right from the beginning, Eliot had no idea how to talk to Hardison in any real way, and time hadn’t helped that much. They laughed, they commiserated, they fucked, they chatted and shared and touched and loved one another fiercely but words, serious words with weight to them that couldn’t be labeled banter, were a barrier they were still working to overcome. Their trio had almost not become what it was, had almost stalled as a pair and a third, because he and Hardison spoke completely different languages; Hardison’s fast and flippant and teasing and Eliot’s stumbling and intense and fierce but both of them sensitive beneath it all. Parker, bless her tactless little soul, had sat them down one night after the brew pub had closed and acted as interpreter. Luckily, it worked. It wasn’t always smooth sailing -- too many nights spent awake and angry and in separate beds to claim that -- but they tried and generally succeeded.

So when Hardison hadn’t know about Ravens, Eliot was at a loss to coherently explain the situation. It was too nuanced, too inherent for his usual fumblings with speech and he ached at the limitation. He’d figured Parker out back when Nate and Sophie were still around, back when they were all still new together and their rough edges didn’t fit together well yet. All the things that annoyed him about Parker -- her _weirdness_ \-- suddenly clicked into place when he saw her perched on the shoulders of a bronze statue in the park, smoothly folding and refolding a piece of tinfoil from her breakfast burrito. He’d scoffed and said she looked like a pigeon, and Parker, stone-faced, had stared at him for a long moment while all the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Then she’d smiled and thanked him, saying that she liked pigeons. When they’d gotten the all-clear from Nate, it’d taken Eliot a few minutes to compose himself enough to follow Parker to the meet up, the sudden realisation clouding his brain. _Raven._

In the weeks after Hardison found the feather and Eliot stumbled over the explanation of who ( _what?_ ) Parker was, Eliot could feel the unasked and unanswered questions sitting over their little trio, hovering like a cloud. Not a dark cloud, not ominous or anything, but present and obvious all the same. He was pretty sure Parker picked up on it, recognized that something was different and that it was delicate enough to need care, but she didn’t bring it up and didn’t treat either of them any differently. It had to come out at some point though, and Eliot was surprised to find himself blindsided when Hardison did finally break the ice.

Parker was sitting between them on the couch, her heels tucked up near her ass, a little tower of Cheerios stacked on each knee and the open cereal box between her legs. Eliot was pretending to watch the movie (True Lies _again_ ), laughing at all the right parts, but the better part of his attention was focused on Parker as she carefully braided strands of their hair together into a single plait, blonde interweaving with brown. Hardison was sprawled out on the remaining half of the couch, his long legs hanging over the arm and his head tucked up against Parker’s hip. A little box of mismatched decorative pins and clips sat on his chest within easy reach of Parker’s blindly searching fingers.

“Hey, Parker?” Hardison kept his eyes on the TV, where Arnold’s character was attempting to fly the Harrier jet. Eliot inwardly rolled his eyes -- action movies just weren’t the same once you knew that Harrier engines can suck people in.

Parker squinted at the braid, slipping a daisy pin into the middle. “Yeah?”

Hardison cleared his throat, then wiggled in place, and Eliot’s eyes went wide with sudden alarmed knowing. “Uh, are you a Raven?”

Eliot carefully regulated his breathing as Parker’s fingers went still. “Oh.” There was a beat of silence, then two. Eliot steeled himself to do something, anything, to rescue the situation, but then Parker continued. “Yeah, I am. Is that okay?”

Hardison nodded against Parker’s hip, glancing up to meet her look out of the corner of her eye. “Yeah babe, that’s totally okay. I just wanted to make sure.”

Parker returned the nod, “Okay.”

The space between them filled with their breathing and the shouts from the TV. Eliot watched Hardison lick his lips and fail to speak three times before he succeeded. “Can you tell me what that means? To you?”

Parker added more of Eliot’s hair to the braid. “What being a Raven means?”

“Yeah. If you want.”

She nodded slowly, almost absently, her fingers smoothing down strands of hair. 

“You don’t have to,” Eliot whispered, his voice cracking. “Not if you don’t want to.”

“I know,” she whispered back, her eyes briefly meeting his. She plucked a Cheerio off the stack on her right knee and ate it, then added another one to the braid. Eliot frowned as she fed some of his hair through the hole as though it were a bead.

“It means I can look like I do now or I can look like a bird but I’m not actually either one,” she finally said, tilting her head as she spoke. She made a grabby hand at the tin of decorations Hardison was holding and he handed her a purple clip. “I’ve always been like this. We all were.”

“‘We’?” Eliot heard Hardison’s voice overlap his own.

“Yeah, ‘we’. I’m not the only one. We were a group.” Parker carefully tucked the hair clip into the braid. “I don’t like ‘unkindness’, it’s too mean. ‘Conspiracy’ is better, a conspiracy of Ravens -- it gives us the right sort of feeling, y’know? That we’re a secret or something. But we always just called ourselves a Coven. The Coven.” She sighed. “I got lost. I was too young to find my way home. And now I’m too far to know how.”

“Do you still want to go back?” Hardison’s voice sounded cautious.

Parker didn’t answer. Arnie’s daughter was clinging to the front of the jet now, her yelling grating on Eliot’s nerves as he watched Parker’s face -- her brow furrowed, her lip slipped between her teeth, and Eliot’s stomach knotted. Eventually, she said, “I don’t know.” 

Eliot closed the scant inches between their faces and pressed a sweet kiss to Parker’s cheek, feeling it shift under his lips as she smiled. “That’s okay. You just let us know if that changes, yeah?”

“If you want help, we’ll do everything we can,” Hardison added. “Anything and everything.”

“Yeah,” Parker breathed out, finishing off the braid with a bobble-tie. “I know you will.”

 

* * *

 

The topic didn’t come up again for over a year. Alec stopped actively searching for information on Ravens, kept the feather in his pen cup beside his monitor, and tried to continue on as though little had changed. And really, little had changed. They still took on jobs and ran the brew pub and watched terrible ( _excellent_ ) movies and stayed up all night together when someone’s demons wouldn’t let them sleep. Eliot still cooked every evening, Parker still covered the coffee table with picked padlocks, and Alec still loved them more than he knew was possible. If he sometimes caught Eliot quietly laughing at his dazed face as he made the connection between another of Parker’s odd habits and her _mythical being status_ , well, that was just to be expected. Grouching about the little collections of antique jewellery tucked in every cranny of the bedroom had a very different feel to it when you remembered your girlfriend was literally a Raven who liked to collect shiny items, okay? It just did.

In the fourteen months since the _True Lies and Ravens_ night, Leverage Inc. had, in part: interfered with a hostile takeover of a cadre of independent news media; traveled to Brazil to disrupt a chain of human trafficking from the US; bankrupted an astonishingly corrupt federal politician; and, with the help of a visiting Nate and Sophie, halted the attempted assassination of a UN official by a homegrown terrorist cell (possibly Alec’s fave of the year -- how Sophie could pull off the femme fatale bit while five months pregnant was a question worthy of serious investigation). They’d been busy.

But in the rainy grey of an early summer evening, the apartment was quiet. Parker and Eliot were on the couch, watching _Steven Universe_ and snuggling as much as Eliot’s bandages would allow. Alec was in the kitchen, popping some popcorn and digging in the fridge for something sweet. When his phone pinged with the alert for the Leverage email account, Eliot’s firm “No” emanated from where he had his head resting on Parker’s shoulder.

Parker smiled and stroked his head while Alec laughed. “Aw, c’mon Eliot,” he cooed, opening the email and skimming through it with a quick flick of his thumb. “You’re not that hurt.”

“I’m stabbed. We’re taking the month off.” When Alec made his way back over to the couch laden with popcorn and chocolate, Eliot’s eyes were still closed. Alec placed the bowl of popcorn in Eliot’s lap and sat on his other side, tucking his arm along the back of the couch and tapping the back of Parker’s head with the bar of chocolate. She took it with a look of delight.

“You’re only a little bit stabbed,” Alec said, snagging some popcorn as he read the email again.

Eliot growled. “How ‘bout I stab you a little bit, see how you like it?” Parker fed him a piece of chocolate and he contented himself with jabbing a finger in Alec’s gut.

Alec batted his hand away. “You’ll want this one, man. It’s another one in the sticks. You’ll feel right at home and try to get us to go fishing with you again.”

“Ooh, fishing!” Parker squealed, leaning over Eliot in an attempt to look at the phone. Eliot groaned and she sat back. “I’ve never been fishing. Let’s go.”

“Stabbed!” Eliot snapped, rearranging Parker’s arm to his liking. She kissed the top of his head in apology. “Vacation. No fishing. Television and warm food and rest.”

“It’s in North Caroliiiiiinaaa,” Alec cajoled, bouncing a little on the spot. “Some place called Bethel’s Hollow? You probably grew up around the corner from there, didn’t you?”

Eliot sputtered. “I’m not even _from_ North Carolina, what the hell. Y’know, for the intel guy, you don’t exact--Parker? What’s wrong?”

Alec looked up sharply from his phone. Eliot was twisted around slightly, his neck craned so he could see Parker’s face and Parker -- Parker was dead still. Alec wasn’t even sure if she was breathing. She did this sometimes when she was thieving, went so motionless that she looked like the statues she stole, but Alec had never seen her do it outside of a job. 

“Parker?” he ventured. He shared a look with Eliot. _What the actual eff._

Parker blinked and looked up from where she had been staring into the middle distance. “Oh. Um.”

“What’s up, Parker?” Eliot asked, casual despite the suddenly increased pulse Alec could feel where their skin met.

Parker swallowed, flitted her gaze over them and looked away. “I think I know that place.”

“Bethel’s Hollow?” Alec asked, glancing at his phone again.

Parker nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I know that place.”

“What about it?”

“Hmm?” Parker looked dazed, not really focusing on them properly. 

“What about it do you know?” Eliot repeated, shifting his weight off of Parker in order to face her properly, his breath stuttering in pain when he jarred his wounds. Parker and Alec both immediately reached out to help, placing hands on his waist and back to ease him into a better position. Alec moved the popcorn bowl to the coffee table. “How do you know it?” Eliot continued, his voice a little rough, glossing over the interruption with closed eyes.

“I don’t know.” Parker flexed her fingers against Eliot’s torso and Alec placed his hands over hers.

“Do you not want us to take them as clients? I can just tell them that we’re too busy, or that we can’t help or something. We’ve said no before.”

Parker shook her head sharply, frowning down into her lap. Her fingers went tense under Alec’s hands and he took them away, giving her the space asked for. She gave him a grateful look and slid off the couch, her long legs bared in their boxer shorts.

“I think… I think I want to know why I know that name,” Parker stammered out, pacing along in front of the couch. Alec settled back in beside Eliot, sliding an arm along his waist to sit on his hip, a thumb hooking into the band on his pajama bottoms. He felt Eliot relax against him slightly, which was partially real and partially Eliot matching Alec’s farce of composure. They watched Parker pace, agitation evident in every movement, her pale feet slapping on the hardwood floor. 

“I--I’m sorry, Eliot,” she said suddenly, stopping her pacing and turning in face them on the couch. “I know you said no, I know and I understand, I just… I need to know why that name is so familiar. It feels important. Really important.”

Eliot opened his mouth, but Parker continued over him. “We can just talk to them and won’t do the job until you’re fixed up, I just need to know. I _know_ that name.”

“Uh,” Alec interjected, glancing between his partners and his phone. “Sorry to be the bubble burster but given the tone of this email, I dunno if we’re gonna be able to help them if we wait a month. This Logwedge company is _definitely_ escalating the harassment.”

Eliot pursed his lips, giving Parker a long look. “Two weeks.” 

Parker’s face fell, some mix of relief and shame painted over it. “No, Eliot, that’s not what I m--” 

Eliot cut her off and repeated, more firmly, “Two weeks.” He rotated his shoulder gently in its socket. “I can do a job in two weeks if it’s not too rough, okay? We talk to them, we see what they need, and, if necessary, we do the job in two weeks.”

Parker stared at him with wide eyes. Eliot just raised his eyebrows. Alec frantically chewed on his lip in the awkward silence. Finally Parker dropped her gaze to her green polished toes.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Thank you, Eliot.” 

Eliot nodded and turned to Alec. “So what are we dealing with?”

Alec shook himself and swiped his fingers over his phone, pausing Steven Universe and throwing the text of the email up onto the television screen.

“Well,” he started, clearing his throat slightly, “the email is from a man named Elijah Buckner and he says that him and four other land owners down in the same area of North Carolina are being aggressively courted to sell their land to Logwedge Ltd., a logging and forestry company based out of Newark. None of them have their land up for sale, and none of them want to sell, but Logwedge has apparently gleefully leapt into harassment and assault territory and the local police are, and I quote, ‘ineffectual’.”

“Why are they pushing for that land so hard? What’s special about it?”

“Dunno.” Alec snatched his laptop up from the coffee table and hit a few buttons. A satellite map of northwest North Carolina popped up on the television screen in front of them, replacing the paused Steven Universe shot. “It seems like pretty common land out there. Nothing’s coming up in the searches.”

Parker’s gaze was locked on the screen in front of them. “What about Logwedge?”

“Let’s see what comes up-- oh, oh, wait, here we go.” Alec threw a few windows up onto the screen, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “Apparently Logwedge Jr., aka Alan Frederickson, is a history buff and a scavenger, with some serious dough backing him up--”

Eliot groaned. “Fucking treasure hunters.”

“Ding ding, got it in one.” More windows went up on the screen, this time featuring photos of the same white man triumphantly holding various chests, papers, and pieces of jewellery. “Seems he’s a bit of a Niffler.”

Three seconds of silence and two matching confused looks later, Alec scoffed. “Seriously? Read some Harry Potter, you uncultured swine. He’s a gold-digger, folks, but in the literal way. He hunts down legends of buried treasure and uses daddy’s money to find them. He’s Indiana Jones without the Nazis.” He paused. “Probably. Who knows, Nazis are cropping up all over the place nowadays. Anyway.”

Eliot sighed and Parker patted his shoulder sympathetically. “Is there a treasure legend in Bethel’s Hollow?”, she asked. “Maybe that’s why I know it.”

“Maybe, maybe,” Alec agreed, fingers moving. “Gimme two shakes to find out.”

> _> > Google ‘north carolina treasure’_
> 
> _> > Search r/TreasureHunting_
> 
> _> > Check Wikipedia _
> 
> _> >>> ‘Devil’s Tramping Ground’?_
> 
> _> >>>>> Discard, too far east. _
> 
> _> > Engage Pond Stone v 5.2 algorithm_
> 
> _> >>> cues ‘bethel’s hollow AND (treasure OR gold OR buried)’._
> 
> _> >>>>> Civil War Education Association_
> 
> _> >>>>> The Fenn Treasure_

“If there is, it’s not a common knowledge thing,” he added. “Nothing in the usual places.”

> _> > Backdoor into FBI files_
> 
> _> >>> crossover tabs for ‘north carolina’, ‘treasure hunters’, ‘X’, ‘cache’_
> 
> _> > Backdoor into Boone, NC PD files_
> 
> _> >>> crossover tabs ‘treasure’, ‘bethel’s hollow’_
> 
> _> > Skim seekers.onion_
> 
> _> >>> Alert: ‘Bethel Hardwood’s secret’_
> 
> _> > Access full Library of Congress database_
> 
> _> >>> search ‘north carolina’, ‘carolina’, ‘treasure’, ‘bethel’s hollow’, ‘bethel hardwood’_
> 
> _> >>>>> Alert: Archives; Mill, John Sawyer; Diaries of a Carolinian; 1721 -- 1756; ‘...Bethel Hardwoods land left to her by her Indian uncle upon his death…’; ‘...whispers of wytchcraft and other such Devil’s works, while others claim she is merely protecting the treasure which was the true legacy from her uncle…’; ‘...Bethel Hardwood died yesterday, unwedded and unheired, and has seemingly bequeathed her damn’d land and its damn’d gold to her niece…’_

“Oooh, and we have a winner, ladies and gents,” Alec crowed, looking up with a grin. “And… yup, records check out. Frederickson checked into the LoC archives and pulled this book three times in the past four months.”

“What is it?”

“A diary of some dude who lived in North Carolina in the early to mid 1700s. He wrote about a woman named Bethel Hardwood who inherited a chunk of land near a place called Blowing Rock, which is about here,” Alec circled the mouse pointer on the map on the screen, indicating an area a few miles from the disputed land. “She got the land from her maternal uncle, blah blah blah, she moved to live on the land and turned into a hermit. People accused her of witchcraft and whatever, but nothing came of it. And here’s the good bit: there were rumours that the uncle had actually given her some sort of treasure or gold or something, and the land was just a way of doing so without letting everyone know. AKA,” he looked up from his screen, smiling broadly. “The treasure was in the land. Literal fucking buried treasure, y’all. We’re gonna need pirate hats for this, I’m getting us hats.”

Eliot snorted. Parker looked somewhere between relieved and disconcerted. “How do we know it’s still there?” she asked. “What if someone else found it, or Bethel herself used it?”

“Well, the diary doesn’t mention Bethel ever acting as though she suddenly became rich, and I couldn’t find anything that implied someone else did. And if Frederickson’s searching for it, that’s probably proof enough. I can dig a little more later. But it sounds like that’s what he’s after.”

“Does any of that sound familiar, Parker?” Eliot asked, watching where she was rocking slightly to and fro on the balls of her feet, her eyes pinned to the map on display.

Parker tucked her hands into the front pocket of her hoodie, fiddling with some bauble she had hidden in there. “I dunno,” she breathed out eventually. “It might be. I just know that I know that name.”

“You good taking point on this?” Alec asked, holding his hand outstretched to her. She glanced at him, then took his hand and let him pull her in to sit on his lap. “If you’re feeling weird about it, I can do it. Or Eliot.” Eliot nodded in agreement, wrapping his hand around Parker’s bare ankle and rubbing gently with his thumb. “Or we can call the whole thing off. It’s up to you.”

“No. No, let’s do it.” Parker let out a long breath. “Let’s go to Bethel’s Hollow.”

“Okay.” Alec kissed her jaw, then her lips when she turned into him. “I’ll set up a client meeting.”

 

* * *

 

The flight to North Carolina two weeks later was uneventful. Parker slept most of the way, curled into a ball on her stiffly upright seat. Hardison hacked into the system that ran the little tv screens and opened up the entire viewing library for free, so Eliot watched four episodes of _Good Eats_ in between physio stretches. The car rental place only had a slick little current model coupe available, which stood out like a sore thumb the further they drove from the city and Eliot made Hardison find another rental location to exchange it. The new car blended in perfectly with the vehicles in the parking lot of the motel where they stopped for the night, two rooms purchased on one card, Eliot’s arm around Parker’s waist and Hardison standing carefully to the side as they all smiled as heteromonogamously as they knew how at the cranky old lady behind the front desk.

They only used one room, the second card forgotten in Alec’s wallet.

They spent the evening going over their plans, reviewing who should be where and when. In theory, it was a simple job. They’d pulled dozens of these in past, both together and separately; it just took a convincing grift and some forged documentation showing that the treasure had been found seventy years ago, paired with some rather skillfully photoshopped pictures of olden days folks standing around with a chest of gold. The Reverse Fiddle Game was a classic, really. But if Nate had taught them anything, it was that Plan A was never the plan that actually happened, so Parker had them memorize and practice everything up to Plan K.

“Beyond that,” she said, “we just drop everything and get out. One of us probably dies in Plan L and no client is worth that.”

Eliot loved that she wasn’t Nate.

The next morning they went out to the site, heading north along the 221 while the sun rose over the trees. Eliot drove, Parker tallied equipment in the passenger seat, and Hardison grumbled about mobile data connections while he tapped away on his netbook. They were planning on making themselves known to Frederickson by snooping around the land in question -- small town gossip would get the word back to him that some strangers were showing interest in the area. Hardison would stay in the car, acting as their external eyes and ears, while Eliot and Parker went for a hike while laden down with suspicious amounts of digging and orienteering equipment.

Their timing was pretty much perfect. They pulled up onto the shoulder at the eastern edge of the woods at the peak of “rush hour”, such that Eliot and Parker’s gearing up was seen by as many locals as possible as they headed out to work in the nearby town. Hardison figured, via some contrived algorithm he gloated about _at length_ , that it shouldn’t take more than a few hours for someone from Logwedge to come out and investigate. In the meanwhile, Eliot and Parker had to make their snooping look legit while also doing some actual investigating into any possible actions Frederickson may have already taken. So, they walked.

Once they got about twenty yards past the treeline, the sound of the sporadic cars passing on the highway died almost completely and Eliot sighed a happy little sigh. Hardison (and, to a lesser extent, Parker) may mock him about being a country boy, but he knew where he grew up and he knew that he would never feel this way, this comfortable and this rooted, in any city. The woodlands of the Carolinas weren’t exactly the same trees he played in as a child, but they were damn close. The tall oaks and ashes and chestnuts raced each other to the sky, their canopies so dense that it was dim and cool on the forest floor. Eliot walked through the ferns and the wild mustard, Parker a few steps behind, both quiet except for their breathing and their soft footsteps in the leaf litter.

Sadly, it only took about forty-five minutes before Hardison made a bunch of noise about a Logwedge truck pulling up behind him back at the road. The one-sided conversation heard through the comms had Eliot cursing as Hardison put his foot in his mouth and his head up his ass, but overall their first contact seemed to go over as planned.

“ _Okay, y’all, they gone. Hoof it back here, we gotta get back to the motel and start Phase Two_.”

“Hardison, could you fumble the story more?”

“ _Hey, listen, that was all on purpose, okay? I was trying to pull off a whole ‘city boy caught doing something he shouldn’t’ vibe, which is basically what I am._”

“You did fine, Alec,” Parker cut in, shooting Eliot a look. He huffed and tugged his hat further down over his eyes. “We’ll head back now.”

“Hold up.” Eliot held out his hand, his fingertips brushing Parker’s forearm. He stared off into the woods ahead of them, eyes narrowed. “There’s something over there.”

Parker froze, eyes wide. “Where?”

“Up there. Thirty feet, my eleven o’clock, over by the pawpaws. Something glinted. There’s metal up there.” 

“Alec, we’re going further in,” Parker said, moving in sync with Eliot when he started forward. “We’ll be as fast as we can.”

“ _Don’t be long and don’t get booby-trapped. I’m your backup and I ain’t exactly Davy Crockett, so you falling in a pit of spikes is gonna be a problem, capisce?_ ”

“We’ll do our best,” Eliot growled, stepping over a tangled snarl of roots. “Hiking around up here while you’ve got your feet up in the cush--” He trailed off, coming to an abrupt halt.

“ _Pfft, got my feet up indeed, why do I always have to explain this to everyone, the tech vehicle is not a place of luxur--_ ”

“Alec.” Parker cut him off.

“ _What?_ ”

Eliot let out a slow breath. In that last pace, something had changed in the quality of the… not of the air, which stayed sweet and clear, and not of the sound around them, still muffled by the foliage. No, Eliot realised with a shudder that crawled down his spine, it was the energy that changed. The _feel_ of the spaces between the trees shifted in some small but important way, charging the air with something that made Eliot want to peel off his skin.

“Parker?”

“Yeah,” she responded, not in question but in agreement. “Yeah. I know.”

“Jesus,” Eliot swore, low and loud. He shook out his hands, then rubbed his ears. He had an almost irresistible urge to leave, to go back to the car. To get away from this place.

“ _Know what?_ ” Hardison demanded in their ears. “ _What’s happening?_ ”

“I don’t know,” Eliot said, half-answering Hardison. He turned to Parker, shifting his weight from foot to foot in agitation. “I’ve got goosebumps.”

“They’re here. This is -- they’re here.” Parker was peering into the woods, her voice almost vibrating with pent up energy. 

Eliot followed her gaze, squinting, his posture going stiff. “Who?” He slid his bag off his back, dropped it to the ground behind him, then widened his stance.

“No, not like that. It’s. The Coven. My Coven. They’re here.” Her eyes were wide, her cheeks pink with exertion and adrenaline. Eliot gaped. “This is Bethel’s Hollow. I know this, this is why I know this place, that name. They’re here.” 

“ _What?_ ”

“I know this. This feeling.” She turned her smile to Eliot, bright and wide. “This is what home felt like.”

“Hell.”

“ _Shit._ ”

 

* * *

 

You better believe they postponed Phase Two.

Alec had Eliot and Parker feel out the edge of the area that gave them the spooky feelings, zigzagging through the woods aimlessly until their skin crawled. Each time they hit the threshold, Alec used the GPS signal in their comms to add another point to his map. It took the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon but they eventually closed the loop, Eliot and Parker ending up back where they started.

“Y’all are gonna want to come look at this,” Alec said, shaking his head in disbelief at the points on the map. “This is some _freaky_ shit.”

Two hours later, they were all back in the motel room, mostly empty Chinese food containers strewn around every available surface. Parker was lying flat on her front in the middle of the bed, her face smushed into the coverlet and her hands splayed out to the sides. She’d been humming a tuneless little song to herself for the past half hour and it was starting to get on Alec’s nerves. It had already gotten all over Eliot’s nerves, given the level of enthusiasm he was putting into his chin ups on the bathroom doorframe. If they have to pay for damages and repairs, it’s coming out of _Eliot’s_ pocket, damn.

Alec was staring at the GPS points on the map. They formed a frighteningly perfect circle about a mile and a half in diameter, smack dab in the middle of the woods in question. Their map showed a decent sized stream flowing through the middle of the circle, but the canopy was too thick to reveal anything else that might be there, hence Alec hacking into different satellite feeds and filters to find something that might be more revealing. No luck, though.

Alec pinched the bridge of his nose and x’ed out of the windows on his laptop. “Listen, we gotta focus. Parker, I know this has really thrown you off and I get it, as much as I can, but we’ve got a job to do.”

Parker dragged her head to the side to look at Alec, the goofy smile on her face slightly distorted by the bed. Alec sighed, shaking his head fondly.

“Babe, are you still in?”

She blinked at him, her smile fading slightly. “Of course.” 

Eliot thumped to the ground and came around the corner, massaging the meat of his palms. There was a bead of sweat trailing down his jaw. He met Alec’s gaze briefly, then leaned against the wall with a serious look on his face.

“Are you going to be able to focus?”

Parker sat up, hands propped on her knees as she gave them both a steady look. “Yes. I’m a professional.”

Alec nodded slowly, glancing at Eliot again. “Okay.” He debated breaching the topic, bringing up what might happen after the job was done, asking what Parker wanted, but decided against it. Time enough for that later. Probably.

“Let’s just pray we don’t have to get to Plan H,” he concluded. “I hate bats.” 

But, astonishingly, they only had to go as far as Plan C. The next day, Frederickson figured out that the ( _beautifully,_ how dare he) photoshopped pictures were fake and jumped the gun on his search efforts, so Parker and Eliot dashed into the woods to “discover” the paste-and-pyrite treasure they’d buried there earlier. Then they led Frederickson and his goons on a merry little car chase back to the motel, let themselves get caught and tied up, and moaned in harmonious despair when Frederickson, astonished and furious, declared the treasure fake. He left in a storm of curses, texting violently into his cloned phone _it’s fake junk, get me a flight back to NJ._

Alec stuck his head through the connecting door between the motel rooms, grinning at Parker and Eliot where they were bound together on the floor. Another job done. And Eliot didn’t even get to punch anyone. Poor sucker.

 

* * *

 

Eliot closed his eyes against the tingles sliding over his skin, reaching an arm out to catch Hardison as he stumbled and swore. He must have felt that same sensation fifty times over when they mapped it out a few days ago, but it was just as weird now as it was the first time. They were back at Bethel’s Hollow, hiking through the woods and aiming for the centre of that slightly ominous circle Hardison had mapped out. The sweet morning air was just starting to warm up inside the protection of the trees, the damp coolness settling on their clothing like a shroud before it steamed off and confused the temperature regulation of Eliot’s skin. The feeling as they crossed that invisible barrier, however, was unmistakable. Shaking off the lingering pressure with a shudder, Eliot checked on Parker and Hardison. Hardison looked like a startled owl, eyes wide and mouth agape, staring at his own hands with astonishment. Parker looked… determined. Unsettled, maybe, but with her face set into some hard and unforgiving. Eliot nodded at her, which she returned, and he gestured for her to lead the way. They made their way single file through the trees, deeper into the Hollow, Eliot’s stomach aching with hunger and anxiety.

He’d woken up in the motel that morning in a weird state, antsy and tense, missing the usual relaxation that tended to follow a successful job. It had taken him a few bleary minutes of listening to the overlapping rhythmic breathing of his bedmates to remember why. 

Parker wanted to go see the Coven. She’d said as much the night before, in the downtime between client wrap-up and dinner.

_Christ._

He’d looked at Parker where she was curled up in her usual place on Hardison’s other side and startled slightly when he saw her eyes were open. Her head had been tucked against Hardison’s shoulder, her hand over his breastbone, and her eyes clear and sharp where they’d watched Eliot see her.

“Have you slept?” he’d asked, his voice cracking in a whisper, and she’d shaken her head solemnly. Eliot had nodded vaguely.

“You--you know we just want you to be happy, right?” He’d cleared his throat, then continued in just as crackly a voice. “Whatever happens.”

Her eyes had softened, and she’d nodded. “I know.”

“Okay.” Eliot had leaned over to kiss her hand where it lay on Hardison. “Then let’s get going.”

But he hadn’t been able to stomach breakfast, a fact he vocally blamed on the quality of the food available at the breakfast buffet. Hardison had given him a look, but didn’t disrupt the pleasant lie by questioning why he’d been able to eat the buffet every other morning they’d spent there.

Now Eliot’s stomach was grumbling, his shoulders were jacked up around his ears, and the continued presence of the weird energy all around him was giving him a headache. However, it was only another half hour or so before all of those discomforts were completely forgotten.

It was then that Parker, at the head of their little line, stumbled to a stop at the edge of a surprisingly sunny clearing. There was a hole in the canopy due to two enormous downed trees, a pair of oaks now lying on the forest floor, partially reclaimed by moss and mustard. Waist-high baby trees crowded into the available sunlight, fighting each other to be the tallest. Eliot stepped out from behind Parker to get a better look, absently noted Hardison doing the same thing, and then suddenly realised none of them had said a word since they crossed the barrier nearly a mile back. Thinking on that as he scanned the space in front of them, he almost missed what had made Parker stop so suddenly, what she was staring at so intently, but he did see it and his breathing stuttered.

There was a small child, maybe seven or eight years old, on the opposite edge of the clearing, well camouflaged in a simple green dress. She was crouching beneath a tall hickory and digging little holes in the loam with a twig, and filling the holes with individual pebbles. The pebbles-in-holes were forming an intricate curling pattern amongst the shoots and roots, twisting out from the base of the tree in rays. The sun peeked through the leaves above her in patches, giving the dark skin of her arm a fawn’s dappling when she reached out to start another hole. There was nothing explicitly unusual about the scene, each aspect standing alone in a perfectly normal way, but Eliot’s skin crawled with an instinctive awe all the same and the ever-present urge to go back to the car heightened sharply.

He exchanged a spooked look with Hardison, then shifted his attention to Parker, who looked like a keyed-in hunter, her eyes trained on the child and totally unmoving. Hardison placed his hand on her lower back, in the space created by the curve of her spine, and gave her the smallest nudge. She rocked forward, startled, and shot Hardison a look, who nodded towards the girl; Eliot did the same when she turned to him. Visibly readying herself, Parker slipped her backpack from her shoulders and left it at their feet, then made her way slowly into the clearing.

Hardison exhaled shakily and Eliot turned his head slightly toward him, his eyes not leaving Parker’s back as she walked away. When Hardison didn’t follow up with anything else, Eliot shifted closer and uncrossed his arms from his chest, dangling his hand alongside Hardison’s and brushing their fingers together in a question. Hardison’s hand wrapped firmly around his, slotting their fingers together and squeezing with a desperation Eliot freely returned.

Parker was still a good ten yards away when the girl noticed her, her head snapping around and her eyes wide. Parker stopped walking, held her hands open by her hips, her fingertips brushing the leaves of the tiny birches and chestnuts at her thighs. The girl twisted to face the clearing, her long dark braids slipping over her shoulders and her eyes fixed on Parker as she slowly unfolded. Eliot could see Parker’s rapid breathing, her fingers twitching anxiously at her sides, and he ached to kiss them, to comfort her tics calm.

The tableau held for a long minute: Parker and the child staring at each other cautiously, Eliot and Hardison bruising their hands as they quietly held on, and the distant rustling of the foliage in the breeze high above them. Then the girl tilted her head to the side slightly, a small movement that was nonetheless so reminiscent of Parker that Eliot had to stifle a laugh and he heard Hardison do the same thing, a choked little noise making it through.

The girl spared them a brief glance, clearly dismissing them in favour of Parker. She took a cautious step forward, rocked back indecisively, then took another. Slowly, she made her way over to Parker, her flip-flops flapping sharply against the soles of her feet in the muffled silence of the woods. Parker crouched into a squat, coming to about eye level with the girl as she approached, keeping her movements slow and smooth. Treating the girl like she’d be easily spooked, or like -- and Eliot allowed his lips to curl into a tiny smile -- like a bird.

The girl stopped almost awkwardly close to Parker, the skirt of her dress brushing against Parker’s knees. She looked at Eliot and Hardison again, her brow furrowed, then back at Parker questioningly. Parker smiled and shrugged, her shoulders settling into something more relaxed than their previous position. Then the girl held up her hand, palm towards Parker, and Eliot had just long enough to question why she was asking for a high five before Parker reacted, mirroring the position and keeping a spare inch between their hands. They gently touched their fingertips together and, with a suddenness that made Eliot jerk on Hardison’s hand, a filmy aura of light encompassed the two small forms.

Eliot blinked, and blinked again, rubbing his free hand against his eyes. The blurry aura stayed, flickering like a mirage around Parker and the child. Iridescent but fleeting, like sun scars in his field of vision but they didn’t track when he looked away. There was an impression of wings, of feathers, of small dark bodies and smaller dark eyes, but if asked Eliot would not have been able to explain where that feeling came from. 

Just as suddenly as it appeared, the light disappeared. When his vision cleared, the spots blinked away, Eliot saw that the girl was _beaming_ at Parker, her smile so wide her eyes crinkled up into slits. She had Parker’s hand grasped in her own and tugged on it, urging Parker to stand and follow. Parker took a few heavy steps, then looked over her shoulder to where Eliot and Hardison were still standing, desperately holding hands.

She smiled, sad and small, then followed the girl into the trees.

 

* * *

 

They waited for hours.

Alec sat first, leaning against a tree and splaying his legs out in front of him in to curse his aching knees. Eliot tugged a raincoat from his bag and forced it under Alec’s ass before silently joining him on it. They watched the break in the trees Parker had walked through while sharing a water bottle back a forth, then granola bars and an apple. They watched as the clearing got brighter, then steadily dimmer as the sun passed over. They watched as Alec’s phone gave a last cry of help, beeping its little battery-depleted death knell from deep within his bag. They watched until the dampness had seeped into their joints and their skin, Alec shivering in uncontrollable spurts, and Eliot wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

Alec let his head fall back onto Eliot’s arm, his neck fitting perfectly over the curve of his bicep. Then he met Eliot’s eyes and understood with perfect, sudden clarity, that they were thinking the same thing: _she’s not coming back._

The sorrow Alec had been carefully and methodically tamping down escaped all at once to well up in his throat and his eyes and his heart. He tilted forward, put his head in his hands, and rasped out “ _Fuck_ ”.

“We knew this might happen,” Eliot sighed, running his hand wearily over his face. “You knew.”

“ _Jesus_ fuck,” was Alec’s only response, conscious and utterly uncaring of how watery he sounded. “Oh my God.”

Eliot cupped his hand, cool and strong, against the bow of Alec’s neck, and Alec focused on the individual points of pressure from his fingers to ground himself. When he got his breathing under control, he looked up and Eliot’s hand fell away. Smeared tear tracks stood out of Eliot’s face, glinting slightly in the failing light, and he scrubbed them away with a snort, staring up at the canopy as more tears leaked out.

“You idiot,” Alec muttered and pulled Eliot into a hug by the front of his shirt, thumping their chests together and wrapping his long arms around him tightly. Eliot went stiff for a split second, then sagged in Alec’s grip, his balled-up fists digging into Alec’s shoulder blades uncomfortably. They cried themselves out in that hug, amplified by the third body that wasn’t there to share it.

They decided to leave her backpack. Alec hung it from a sturdy branch just above eye-level -- visible to someone looking for it, but not easily found for a passer-by. Not that there were going to be many passers-by here, he knew, but it was the thought that counted. Then they started their bleak hike back to civilization, quiet and cold and mourning and unable to breathe through their noses in the aftermath of tears. Passing back through the boundary into the regular forest took Alec’s breath away, both because of the sudden relief of pressure and the finality of leaving that terrible, amazing place. Of leaving Parker there.

He stared up at the sky, twilight blue in the spaces between the leaves. “She’ll be happy here,” he said, almost to himself.

Eliot grunted in response, putting his head down and brushing past Alec to take the lead. Alec let him, shooting one more look over his shoulder to the invisible boundary before following.

It felt interminable, the distance to the car, but they covered it eventually. Alec was focusing on where he had to put his feet, following very literally in Eliot’s footsteps while his mind wandered, considering how Leverage would continue without their thief, when Eliot spoke.

“Wait,” he murmured, pulling Alec from his thoughts.

“What?”

“There’s someone by the car.” Eliot nodded down the short slope to the figure distorting the smooth shape of their rental.

“What? Where?” Alec sputtered, then straightened up to look over Eliot’s head. “Oh, I see. Hell, the last thing we need right now is more trouble fr--”

He cut himself off. _What. No._

“Parker?!”

Parker was perched on the hood of the rented car, knees to her chest and fingers playing with her shoelaces. She looked up at Alec’s exclamation, smiling shyly, and squealed when he jumped the ditch to sweep her into a twirling hug. Her hair smelled like flowers.

“How--?” he blurted, spreading a hand over her cheek to steady her face, to take her in. “Why?”

“Her name is Clara,” Parker gushed, her eyes bright and teary. “Her name is Clara and she took me to the others and they remembered me.” She thudded her head down onto Alec’s chest and let out a small sob. “They remembered me. And I left anyway.”

Alec ran one hand through her hair, cupping the back of her head and pressing a kiss to her crown. He saw Eliot standing on the other side of the car, his face a storm of anger and confusion and childlike joy. Alec released Parker with one hand and held it out to him, beckoning. Eliot didn’t move. 

Parker looked up and followed Alec’s gaze, her face falling when she saw how far away Eliot was standing.

“Please, Eliot?” she whispered, and he cracked, stepping around the car and wrapping her up in a hug from her back, his arms entwining with Alec’s.

“Damn it, Parker,” he swore into her hair, and she let out a watery laugh.

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you stay? We thought you were going to stay,” Alec asked, almost gasping with the crowding of emotions in his lungs.

“I did. I almost did. I was going to. But I decided they’re the kind of family you visit. You,” Parker said, looking them each in the eye in turn, “are the family you stay with. I don’t belong there anymore.” She wriggled slightly in their arms, impossibly snuggling into both their chests at the same time. “I belong here.”

Alec felt the band of tension in his stomach snap and disappear. “Girl, I’m so glad you agree.” He met Eliot’s eyes, which closed as he buried his nose into Parker’s hair. “We feel the same way.”

They stood there, hugging on the side of the road, until Parker shivered in her damp t-shirt one too many times. Eliot nabbed the driver's seat and cranked the rear heat while Alec and Parker piled into the back. Alec did a double take at the bag in the foot well -- Parker’s backpack. The one he left hanging back in the Hollow. He shot her a questioning glance and she just winked, accented by a shrug. “Bird,” she said.

Alec just shook his head, smiling. “Let’s go home.”

So they did.

**Author's Note:**

> Combining the distant, faintly creepy feel of American magical realism with the peppy, dialogue-drenched essence of Leverage while also keeping the boys' voices as distinct and canonical as possible has been a challenge, folks, but a challenge I enjoyed profusely. I hope you enjoyed it too. :)


End file.
